"The reviews are in: Facebook Home, Mark Zuckerberg's grandiose stab at totally controlling our mobile experience, is an unmitigated disaster. On Wednesday, AT&T announced that it was dropping the price of the HTC First smartphone, which comes with Facebook Home built in, from $99 to 99 cents. Think about that: a new smartphone, priced to jump off the shelves at Dollar General. It's a great deal, but it is also hugely embarrassing for Zuckerberg. [...] For confirmation we need only look at the Google Play store, where the Facebook Home app, which can be installed on select Android phones, has now fallen to the No. 338 ranking in the category of free apps. That's 200 spots lower than it ranked just two weeks ago." Totally did not see this coming whatsoever.

Still, I feel pretty dumb for continuing to give up my privacy for easier communication.

Well, security and privacy is always a matter of making compromises. Sure, you could be completely private (or secure) but at a severe convenience and usability price.

the fact remains they still see and record everything you do on the service as

Yeah, but every single service provider you use could be doing that. Your email provider can read all your emails (unless they're encrypted, which is unlikely in most cases), your IM provider can log all your messages etc etc.

well as other websites you visit even after you log off of theirs.

Hmm..I'm pretty sure that tracking only works while you're logged in to facebook. Can't really see how it would when you're logged off. For one, they wouldn't know your login unless you're logged in.